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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Rupert Murdoch as Don Corleone

Yesterday, discussing an Observer article by Henry Porter and Toby Helm on News International's threats against the Liberal Democrats, I mentioned Phillip Blond's tweet "it sounds more like Sicily than London".

Funnily enough, Henry Porter develops just the same comparison in another article in todays' paper:

Murdoch has probably never been rougher than in defending the company against the phone-hacking allegations that imperilled the deal once it was referred. Direct threats were made to senior figures at newspaper groups.

One was delivered in a private meeting last March with Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the Independent group of newspapers and the London Evening Standard. The meeting, which was initiated by Murdoch, was presented to the Lebedevs as an informal chat where they would get to know each other and talk about the newspaper business.

Soon after their arrival, the atmosphere changed and Murdoch began to remonstrate with them about the Independent's coverage of his affairs. He said he had three volumes of clippings from their newspapers, attacking him. He was particularly exercised about the offence done to his family – and called the coverage "a vendetta". He ended with a threat. Until then he had held James back from launching an attack on the Lebedevs, but he didn't know how long he would be able to do that.

One is reminded of Vito Corleone speaking about his headstrong son, Sonny, and indeed the Murdoch obsession with family seems strikingly Sicilian.